


stars in the sky look like home

by aquaexplicit



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Beach Day, Crack Treated Seriously, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Lowkey Implied Polyamory If Tess Was Alive, M/M, Obviously He and Cisco Make Out, Recreational Drug Use, Wonky Time Shenanigans Bring E1 Harrison Back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 00:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16923003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquaexplicit/pseuds/aquaexplicit
Summary: If Cisco can give Harrison even a moment of connection, if he can ease even a second of the isolation ache, then he will. He owes Harrison this, at least. Everything, really. Anything Harrison will take.





	stars in the sky look like home

**Author's Note:**

> an embarrassingly belated birthday gift for nessa <33333333333333333  
> also shout out to stars-n-spacee for dubbing cisco/e1 harrison as vibeson !

“On Earth 21, they say the Big Dipper is the spirit of a dragon.”

Cisco moves Harrison’s hand with his own, leading Harrison to trace the twinkling stars. They burn clear here on the beach, without the city lights and smog. The only thing clouding them is a thin layer of weed smoke that still lingers from their last bowl.

Harrison’s pulse trips under Cisco’s fingers, throbbing hot as the summer sand beneath their picnic blanket. Cisco feels his heart spark in time. He could ignore it. He should ignore it.

His index finger slips too soft over Harrison’s as he traces the stars. He can feel Harrison watching him instead of the constellations he’s naming.

“They think that’s the tail,” Cisco explains. Harrison doesn’t bother to look where he’s pointing. “And that’s the head. Personally, I don’t see it, but dragons were real there once, so. I’m not gonna argue with them.”

Heat pulses along the insides of Cisco’s cheeks, drying out his mouth and words. He offers a half smile and gives Harrison’s hand back to Harrison’s spread lap. Harrison blinks as if he forgot the hand was attached to him. Then he blinks back, bleary eyed but grinning as bright as the sky. A different warmth spreads through Cisco.

Those smiles have been few and far between, not that Cisco can blame him. Being sundered back into existence by Nora’s blip in the timeline only to find that his world had ended and the rest of the world had spun on wasn’t exactly easy.

Harrison has been mourning the death of his wife, his company, his name. Cisco is trying to give him time. Not expect too much. He understands the monster of grief. He knows it thrives in the lonely and the silence and the still.

If he can give Harrison even a moment of connection, if he can ease even a second of the isolation ache, then he will. He owes Harrison this, at least. Everything, really. Anything Harrison will take.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Cisco asks.

Harrison nods earnestly. “Incredible,” he agrees, adjusting his position so he’s facing Cisco more fully than all the midnight beauty in front of them. “You’re just. Incredible.”

Cisco glances away. His nails scratch blunt along the back of his own neck, quieting the flutters of Harrison’s admiration. Harrison offers awe as easy as breathing. He reminds Cisco of Thawne, in that way - his tongue is always quick with compliments to Cisco’s cleverness. But there’s a deeper dark in Harrison’s voice, ocean vast, crashing with something underneath that Cisco can’t quite see.

Cisco isn’t sure if he should try to see it. If he should attempt to peer into Harrison Wells the same way he’s excavated so many other Wells that have wrecked their ways into his chest. Those open bone explorations have never worked out for Cisco before.

“I didn’t mean me.”

“I know,” Harrison says. His fingers pinch clumsy for the pipe again. He misses it at first, and Cisco's chest loosens at the visceral reminder that this sweet nerd isn’t any Wells he’s ever known. “But you are. Your powers - the things you’ve seen, the things you can do. It’s amazing. It’s like. It’s like.”

Harrison squints his eyes as his wispy weed tongue tries to curl around the words. It twists his face in a way that makes Cisco laugh. He keeps laughing until Harrison reaches for his hand again.

His heart beat swoops, high as the rest of him. He tells himself it’s just the Northern Lights they’ve been sharing that’s licking his pulse and not the warm press of Harrison’s fingers on his palms.

“It’s just like the stars. Connected. Balanced.”

Harrison speaks in hushed, awed tones as he directs Cisco’s hand along the gauzy twinkle of starlight. Their skin intwinted seems to distract him from the sky. His eyes goes glassy, unfocused but straining to focus, and he stares at Cisco’s palm as if he’s searching for constellations in the lines. When he speaks again, his thumb moves with his words.

“I lost my world when Thawne took my place here. He gave you a thousand more.” Harrison looks at Cisco, then. His mouth is soft in a sad little smile that makes Cisco’s entire heart hurt. “I’m not sure what place I have in this universe, anymore, but knowing you have so many inside of you - it makes me feel like I can find it again.”

Cisco’s fingers itch with the urge to tuck his hair back, to press at the heat at the top of his spine in, to calm it. But Harrison is still holding his hand. Cisco doesn’t want to take another thing away from him.

Instead, Cisco smiles. “You are so high, man.”

“I - yes.” Harrison laughs. “Yes I am. But I’m still making sense. Tess used to try to convince me I never made sense when we got like this, but I do. I’m making sense to you, right?”

“Perfect sense,” Cisco tells him honestly.

Cisco is never sure how to react when Harrison talks about Tess. About his life that Thawne took without a thought. Guilt always whispers at Cisco’s still raw sores, reminding him how he laughed and loved like a father the man who tore Harrison’s skin and bones and heart. He offers Harrison his shoulder, his understanding of that sharp, special grief of being spared by a cruel twist of time when someone he loved was left to bleed out at the speed force’s feet.

He’s going to curl his fingers around Harrison’s again, attempt to remember the Scorpio constellation he learned when he was nursing his last breakup with Earth 15 whiskey, but Harrison’s thumb sinks into the meat of his palm.

“I wish she had met you,” Harrison says, thumbnail drawing a shiver thin as moonlight along Cisco’s skin. It silvers up Cisco’s spine. He must be lost in hazy hued sensation, unaware that he’s practically petting at Cisco, that he’s spilling cotton mouth intimacy over parts of Cisco that haven’t been touched in years. “I wish you had met her.”

“Me too. From what I’ve read, she was quite the lady.”

Harrison’s smile blooms wry. “She was. And she would’ve adored you. She had a weakness for brilliant, beautiful men.”

Cisco feels the heat from his blood leech through his skin. He thinks Harrison will startle at his own lazy words. Realize what he said. Try to swallow back the meaning.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t stop tracing Cisco’s palm lines, either. “I don’t actually know how she felt about leather. But I imagine she would’ve had a weakness for Vibe, too.”

The laugh that tumbles out of Cisco is awkward, bubbling like pressure in his chest. It brings Harrison from his trance. Harrison blinks owlish at him.

“It, uh, kind of sounds like you’re implying she would’ve had a crush on me.”

Cisco angles for charming. A bright smile, an easier laugh, something to gentle the tension that it seems only Cisco can feel mounting.

Harrison shakes his head, releasing Cisco’s hand with a soft little pat to the backs of his fingers. “Sorry. I’m not always the best with words. Tess was always better at.” He waves his hand. “I wasn’t trying to imply she would’ve had a crush on you.”

Cisco nods. “Yeah, I didn’t - ”

“She would have,” Harrison interrupts. He’s still smiling, but all the night light of it is bright. Earnest. “I was trying to be very clear about that.”

“Oh,” Cisco says, because. Oh.

Harrison glances at his own fingers. “We always did have the same taste.”

Cisco swallows. “Now it sounds like you’re saying you have a crush on me.”

“Sorry,” Harrison repeats. “That’s - I’m making you uncomfortable. I was just trying to compliment you, and I made you uncomfortable. Sorry. I shouldn’t have - ”

“Hey, don’t apologize. It’s. Cool,” Cisco assures him, unsure if it is, if it isn’t. He’s too stoned for this conversation. This isn’t a conversation his brain could handle sober. He looks at the stars again, less blinding than Harrison’s gentle grin. “I’ve had a lot of Wells tell me a lot of things before, but never that they could have a crush on me. Just a lot for the old. Head modem.”

Cisco taps his head while Harrison laughs. He knows that was lame, but he doesn’t think he can be held accountable for anything when a man with that face is using it to watch him like he’s the only thing worth seeing.

“Never?” Harrison seems unconvinced.

“I mean, HR told me I cleaned up nice once, but that’s not really. The same.”

“Barry said you had a… connection, with all the Wells.”

Cisco stares until the tectonic plates in his brain shift click together. “An emotional connection, dude. Not, like, a bone collection connection. Is that what you’ve been thinking this entire time? I was banging your doppelgangers? Your doppelbangers?”

“I just thought,” Harrison attempts through his laughter. “I thought, with the way you talk about them. And everyone talks about you with them. And you’re so breathtaking.”

The word takes Cisco’s breath away. He stops laughing, incredulous and only half offended, and watches Harrison watch him.

“I couldn’t imagine anyone even remotely like me, even if they were from another Earth, not seeing that. Not being - taken, completely, with everything you are.”

Harrison’s words and stare and focus are so sincere. Cisco feels caught in the ocean, pressure dark from every side, pushing the air from his lungs and the sense from his head. He looks away.

“I thought you said you weren’t good with words. You’re being ridiculously charming for someone who doesn’t usually do the talking.”

“It’s an accident. I’ve never been charming on purpose.”

Cisco sweeps at his hair, only for it to fall immediately back against his cheeks. “That sounds more like the Wells I’m used to.”

Harrison tilts his head. “So you’ve really never - with any of my doppelgangers? You’ve never been anything more than friends?”

“Family,” Cisco says. “Some of them have been - are like - family to me.”

“Family,” Harrison echoes. He watches Cisco push at his strands again. “So if none of them have ever told you how beautiful you are, I’m assuming none of them have ever complimented your hair?”

Cisco’s fingers freeze against himself. He curls them, all the power and uncertainty of them, all the potential to unlock a new world, and pushes everything into his own palm. Energy buzzes over the lines Harrison traced, the ones Cisco can still feel.

“No,” he says, and the weight of it anchors him to the sand.

Harrison hesitates before scooting closer. Their knees bump. “None of the other Wells have ever touched it?” Cisco shakes his head. Harrison lifts his hand, slowly, with none of the violence or whimpers or secrets that have made other hands so heavy. “Can I?”

And Cisco has this moment to say no, to mean it, and lay with gentle but final fists a silence to the buzz between them. He can stop another hurricane from spawning in his chest. He can turn the Wells shaped lock that keeps his pain neatly at the surface. He can refuse to hand over the key with his usual eagerness and open hands.

There is no way the multiverse is going to let him keep this Wells. He’s lost nearly every Wells he’s met. He’s lost this Harrison once already, when the man was a mountain he never thought he would be grand enough to see, let alone walk along. The mess Nora made when she went further back in time than she originally intended is the only reason they’re sitting across from each other now, and the speed force always demands sacrifices. Cisco’s heart is the force’s favored offering.

“Just so I can tell the other Wells I have,” Harrison says, smiling, backpedaling to ease Cisco the trauma of rejecting him. “They’ll be so jealous.”

Cisco can play it off, now. Say no with a grin and pretend he doesn’t see the tilt of Harrison’s gaze, doesn’t suddenly recognize the longing that beats with the lonely.

Instead Cisco takes Harrison’s hand again. “Okay. But don’t tell Lothario.”

Harrison’s fingers through his hair are electric. Sensation tendrils from Harrison’s skin through Cisco’s bones, loosening them, melting them, until Cisco is nothing but closed eyes and fanned lashes and calm.

“You’re so soft,” Harrison whispers, fond, as if they’ve known one another’s touch as long as the stars. Cisco feels it. There is something both new and familiar in the way Harrison sweeps chills and comfort along his entire body with the twist of fingers through his hair.

“My conditioner game is strong.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never let another Wells do this.”

It’s like vibe blasting concrete to open his eyes, but he manages to blink at Harrison’s face that has orbited closer than he last remembered. “No other Wells has ever wanted to.”

“I don’t believe that,” Harrison says. Then he pauses. Cisco wants to whine at the lost sensations. He bites his tongue. “Have you ever let another Wells touch your chin?”

The question is odd enough to startle Cisco from the heat of the moment. “My - you wanna touch my chin?”

“You have a dimple there.” Harrison taps his own chin, where his skin is smooth and bones are strong. “It’s cute.”

“No other Wells has touched my chin, no.” Cisco smiles into the admission, the same as Harrison.

“Can I?” Harrison asks again. Cisco nods.

He expects it to feel awkward, and strange, and laughable. But Harrison settles his thumb into the groove that Cisco rarely notices himself, other hand still in Cisco’s hair, and the pressure is light enough to make Cisco gasp. Harrison’s thread catches on the rough of it immediately.

“Have you ever let another Wells kiss you?”

Cisco’s throat seizes. “No,” he breathes.

Harrison seems to consider this. He abandons Cisco’s hair and chin to bring both palms to Cisco’s cheeks. His fingers lap gentle waves against Cisco’s skin. It’s as hypnotizing as the ocean, pulling Cisco just as dark and deep, lulling Cisco to close his eyes. To surrender.

“Can I?”

Cisco wonders if he had learned to say no to another Wells at some point in his life if he would want to say no now. He feels Harrison’s breath puff against his own, warm as salt water, as summer, and he wants to sink. Give in, give up, give himself. Give everything he has to this man that he doesn’t know but feels in his heart like another beat.

Harrison says his name again, touches the dip in his chin again, and Cisco surrenders any pretense that this isn’t something he’s dreamed about.

“Can I, Cisco?”

Cisco kisses him. Both of their eyes are open, and Harrison’s widen in surprise, then crinkle in a smile that Cisco can feel against his lips.

The pressure is light. Chaste. Cisco feels the earth shifting between his fingers, flowing like the easy energy that electrifies the gentle kiss.

He lets Harrison cup his jaw, tilt his head, lulling him so Harrison can kiss him more softly, more deeply. His fingers slide from sand to Harrison’s chest. Harrison’s heart hammers under his palm.

When Harrison eases away, Cisco wants to chase him. He can’t lose Harrison yet, not yet, and he pulls at Harrison’s shirt. Harrison chuckles. Gentle his teeth into Cisco’s bottom lip, scraping with a hint of tongue before he slips their mouths apart.

“I’m not going anywhere, Cisco,” he whispers. “Just needed to breathe.”

“Breathing is overrated,” Cisco insists, urging Harrison close again.

The next kiss is an Earth away. Deeper into heat, into pink wet, and Cisco drowns happily against Harrison as he licks into Cisco’s mouth. Cisco isn’t sure how long they learn the text of each others tongues before Cisco’s fingers grow sharp and needy and hungered.

He yanks at the fabric of Harrison’s shirt until they’re tumbling onto the sand, Harrison on top of him. Harrison stares down at him, smile and eyes broken bright. Cisco grins. His palms slide down Harrison’s chest, over the tremble of his stomach, coaxing his head to drop forward in a pant.

“Cisco.”

“You wanted to find your place in the universe, right?” Cisco asks, slipping his touch under Harrison’s shirt.

Harrison balances with one palm near Cisco’s head, his knees anchoring the rest of his weight against Cisco’s hips. He trails his other hand over Cisco’s sternum, his belly, settling above his hip.

“Yes,” Harrison breathes.

Cisco takes Harrison’s wrist again, sweeping his touch lower. “Let me help you find it.”


End file.
